Shop project – mallet rack

A cloudy and rainy morning turned into a mild and humid day yesterday, so I did find some time to get in the shop yesterday afternoon. I wish I would have had time to get this posted for you yesterday, but I had other duties. I got a small project completed pretty much to my liking, and the build of it follows.

I mentioned that I had too many hammers and mallets for my current rack, and wanted to make a new one. So I laid out everything I had on my bench and got a real representation of how much room I needed.

For the kind of rack I wanted, the hammers wouldn’t really work on them, so I removed them.

Left with just the mallets, I selected a nice offcut of 3/4″ white birch plywood that I had that was about double the room, then picked a prebeveled piece of 3/4″ ply for the cleat and a piece of 2×4 to do the holding.

You can see faintly the lines I’ve marked on the longer two pieces to match up with the shortest piece of ply. I cut them down to size on the miter saw. I should have cut the notches first, but I assembled it together with my favorite Spax torx bit screws. Then I remembered how nails have better shear properties than nails, so I added a couple of those to give it additional strength. This is now overbuilt, but that’s a good thing.

Once it was together, I marked lines where I needed to remove the notches to fit the handles. I spaced them so I could fit five mallets. Two to grow on, I figure that amount is good for awhile, and I could easily make another this size. I dit most of the waste removal at the bandsaw, and I was again reminded I need a good blade and to set everything up again properly. I would say definitely that this will be my next purchase, but I can’t guarantee that. I’d like to get down to Highland Hardware one day and check the store out, and that would be a good place to make my first real blade purchase. But back to the project. I finished up with a couple of chisels in the vise. Unfortunately I forgot about pine’s propensity to chip when unsupported, so one of my last passes with the chisel and mallet took off a chunk of underbelly. Not a big deal on this project, but it’s something to bear in mind. Here I am making sure my sizing is right.

And here it is up on the wall, next to the hammer rack. It (the hammer rack) needs to be rebuilt (because it sucks), but I’m going to wait and see what I’d like to add to it first. I may choose something similar to the mallet rack. I need to rebuild a few things on the wall because they are sagging, like the spring clamp rack. Simple things, really.